Tuesday, February 21, 2012

For the last few years, the Rocket Boys have been participating in a pinewood derby race. Each year, they have done various amounts of work on their own cars, and much of the painting, but all of the details have been left to "the art department". That would be me, of course. I have made Domo-kun and penguins out of fimo clay, also sci-fi -esque engines and weapons, etc. Every year I think that they are having all the fun and I really should enter my own car, but then get sidetracked. This was to be the last year they do it together, and my husband was also entering a vintage car of his own, so I decided it was time. I figured it had to represent me, so a knitting theme was the obvious choice, and I pondered all the possibilities until just a day before the race when the face-palm "Doh!" moment finally happened. The block had already been shaped, sanded and painted into the closest representation I could make of a knitting needle. How to work some yarn into the design was the detail eluding me until I finally realized that I could make it look as if there were actually knitting on the needle and make the WIP look like a fin on the "car". Or maybe like this it looks more like a rocket? It works, either way, in my opinion. There certainly was no other car in the race that looked anything like her. There she is on the starting line of the first heat...not the fastest car in the race, but it was a lot of fun.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Secret Project #1 has been delivered to its destination, so now my focus is on Secret Project the Sequel. Sometimes it feels like I am the only person in the knittingverse who has NOT worked with any of the yarns from Blue Moon Fiber Arts, specifically the "Socks That Rock" line. When I was asked to use one of the Blue Moon yarns for an upcoming project, I chose the Socks That Rock Heavyweight, and have REALLY enjoyed working with it. The project in question as both lace and cables, and I felt it needed a fairly dense yarn, one without too much fluff. STR Heavyweight has been perfect - the stitches pop nicely, and the semisolid colorway has just enough variegation to be intriguing but not enough to distract from the stitch patterns. I'm really looking forward to showing off the completed project in a few months...

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

After 14 years of living in Seattle, My New England born-and-bred self still is mystified by what passes for winter here. Around the middle of January, the several inches of snow that fell over the course of a few days was reported in such dire tones by the national media that I had relatives calling and e-mailing every day to check on us. In fairness, a lot of people in the region did lose power because of trees falling on power lines, so I did feel pretty lucky that the biggest consequence for us was that the Rocket Boys got an extra week of school vacation, and I couldn't get up the big hill to my studio assistant work for Hazel Knits all week. But then as the snow started to melt I discovered daffodils had started coming up in my yard while Snowmageddon was at full strength. To me, that sums up winter in Seattle. Too bad spring doesn't actually start here until June...